Running 5 minutes a day might add years to your life

A participant of the 9th 'Zugspitze' mountain sprint runs towards the Grubigalm in Ehrwald, Austria, in 2009.

Miguel Villagran

Image copyright 2014 Getty Images. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Attention, everyone who hates to run: Turns out you only need to torture yourself for about five minutes a day to reap some important health benefits.

According to a new study published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, those who jogged or ran for as little as five minutes a day reduced their risk of premature death by about three years.

The study's lead author says those who run for less than an hour a week reap the same health benefits as those who run more, regardless of age, gender or health conditions: "More [running] may not be better in relation to health benefits."

To get these results, researchers studied the exercise habits of more than 55,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 100 over the course of 15 years.

They found compared to those who didn't run at all, those who ran less than an hour a week were 30 percent less likely to die for any reason during the course of the study.

And on top of that, those runners were also 45 percent less likely to die of cardiovascular disease.

To learn more about the findings and why consistency is key, watch this Newsy video.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.